Prof Shameem: Holi – an opportunity to consider deep-seated humane principles

Holi is an opportunity – not often granted or taken – to consider some deep-seated humane principles that the festival represents.

The triumph of good over evil, of love and romance, of forgiveness and relationship building, of laughter and play and forgetting of sorrows for a while, and of harvest and bounty and happiness in what the earth has given us.

University of Fiji Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Shaista Shameem made these comments in her address at the Holi festival held at the Global Girmit Institute in Saweni, Lautoka.

She said those were significant principles of universal application and it was proudly given to the rest of the world by the ancient religion of Hinduism, which she added was a religion that had the deepest roots in humanity itself from the beginning of time.

“Thus, these principles, celebrated during Holi, have stood the test of time,” Ms Shameem said.

She said there was no better time than now to reflect on those principles in the first months of the first year of the third decade of the 21^st century.

She noted the global catastrophe last year and how COVID-19 not only tested our faiths, “it also brought on deep sorrow for so many who lost their loved ones to the virus and it inflicted economic disaster on those who lost their jobs and professions”.

“Therefore, what is there really to celebrate this Holi, you might say.

“We need a trigger point to move away from any negative mindset, difficult though it may be. The human condition is such that we are optimists by genetic history.

“The most universal feeling that is shared by all of us wherever we are, by the very virtue of being human, is hope.

“We hope for a great harvest, we hope for happiness, we hope for love and romance – that fluttering of the heart that makes us feel alive – and we hope for better times ahead.

“And hope is what we emphasise with our celebration of love and romance, laughter, play and frolic during Holi. This is what I will be celebrating this Holi and we will do the same when the University of Fiji holds its own celebrations next week.”